The studies proposed in this application continue to explore factors which regulate the transaction of a family with its social environment. Previous work in our laboratory suggests that among the most important of these factors is the family's shared experience or construction of its social environment. This project focuses, in particular, on the role of these shared constructs in regulating families' responses to external stress. Evidence suggests that these shared constructs differ from family to family, are important in governing their adaptation to novel events and remain relatively stable. We examine their role in families' interpretations of an responses to stressful life events by means of interviews and standard laboratory methods for family assessment. Our focus is on delineating families' own definitions or interpretations of stressful events and the behaviors that, in all likelihood, are most closely tied to those definitions and interpretations.